A Great Lament
by zulu-ottawa
Summary: In 1921, Mary is adjusting to living without Matthew, but in 1925, her life again begins to have its golden days.
1. Chapter 1

_A/N: This has gone through many evolutions – at first just to help my grief over the CS – but as more was publicized about S4 and a suitor was named, I had so many questions that I decided to build his character myself. Though I'm sure the canon Lord Anthony will be nothing like this one. Infinite thanks to swarleyy for putting up with my insanity; you are my stick, darling._

* * *

**i.**

_you've shown me I've been living in a dream, and now it's time to return to real life._

* * *

_September, 1921_

"How?"

Her father clung to the rungs at the foot of the bed, his shoulders hunched. She watched them shudder, suddenly wanting to crawl across the bed and hug him, shake the words out of his mouth. "The car..." He stopped and started and stopped and wiped his eyes, turning to look at the wall. "The car crushed – "

"Is he here?"

"The lorry driver brought him in but Mary you don't want – "

"I will see him." She could hear how cold she sounded, could feel her eyes losing focus, the baby a weight on her chest, a weight that turned cold but did not leave even as she passed him to his grandfather. "You know I'm no good at hanging back." Mary did not wait to see how he held her son. Her body ached, but she moved down the hall and toward the infirmary with one hand against the wall, like she was blind, palm pressed flat to ease the claustrophobia rising in her lungs. A man sat at the far end of the corridor wringing a hat in his hands, and he stood when he saw her. He lowered his gaze to the floor.

It was like 1918, dark panelled walls, the white shroud of screens around the only occupied bed. _On any terms_, she thought, _I promised on any terms_. How did she steel herself before? He was not hers then, she did not know how he acted throughout an entire day, how he slept and woke. She pulled back the screen and it was not the chaos she expected, but just him, on a bed nearly too short for his frame, shoulders arcing up, hands curled.

"Oh, Matthew." She felt the same flood of emotion as years ago, the same helplessness, the same silent pleading for him to open his eyes. She did not know where to put her hands. "Darling." Of their own accord they fisted into his shirt, like she could pull him from this if she were willing. It was a simple thing. Just her palms to his ribs and the cruel glare of her wedding rings, over his heart.

"Mary." She looked up sharply to her mother, holding her hand out, shaking. "Come away, dear."

"No," she immediately snapped. "I – no." Her fingers relaxed against the fabric. "Could nothing... ?"

"You must go back to your son," Cora said. Her voice cracked on the last word. _Our son, ours, us, _Mary thought, as her mother's hand went to her mouth.

She stared at his face. She carded her fingers through his hair, cool, but not as cool as his skin, grey-shadowed even in the fiery light of sunset that was beginning to tint the walls. "Please go," she whispered to Cora.

Cora went with a silence that was foreign to her, and the room hissed, exhaled, Mary's hands finally finding his. There was no movement of his thumb across her knuckles, the action she had grown so used to, and this was what made her cry in a way she could not with anyone else.

He had seen every sharp edge and softened it, had argued until it became stubborn flirtation, and whenever she spoke he had listened to her words but looked behind them too.

* * *

Robert was sat on the edge of the bed, cradling the baby, speaking to him in a low, soft voice. "He was alone," she said, sitting beside him. Cora stood at the edge of the room. Mary reached out for her son, who squawked at the transfer but settled against her. Her father touched his palm to the back of her head, something he had not done since she was small. "My darling girl, I'm – " he said, choked, leaning with elbows on knees to collect himself.

"I should see to Isobel," Cora said, gaze darting to her husband's slumped form. Her hands flitted, and she stepped forward but stopped herself as Robert took a shuddering breath. Mary pressed her eyes shut.

"He needs a name," her father whispered. Mary met his bloodshot eyes and felt tears well.

It was an ache. It was an ache that would not go. "Not yet," she said fiercely, drawing the blankets around her son's waving hands. "My first task is to bury my husband."

* * *

It had been calla lilies at the wedding and it was calla lilies now, at the front of the church, on the grave, in her hands. They were the only white in the room, aside from the baby's shawl. He was passed to her mother when she noticed Mary's legs shaking, eyes tracking the coffin back down the aisle to the churchyard, carried on the shoulders of her father and Carson, Moseley, Thomas, James and Tom.

Cora held the baby as Matthew was lowered into the earth. She could avert her eyes from Mary, who was stood still and straight, gloved hands clasped, Violet and Isobel flanking her. The first handful of dirt hit the coffin, the rite finished – _in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to eternal life_ – and everyone began to turn away.

Mary did not move. She thought of Matthew stood at another grave not far from this one, leant on a cane, gold and black and so pale, such pale eyes. We're cursed, you and I. I will love you until the last breath leaves my body. She knew he had, he'd said it, but still her son would never hear him, would be held once by him but not remember it. The boy cried behind her and Cora hushed him, but Mary turned quickly and held her arms out, a sudden, spearing ferocity in her chest. "He mustn't get cold," she heard herself say, looking at his slow blinking eyes, the foggy blue of them. The feeling was protectiveness, she realized, something maternal, _you are going to be such a wonderful mother. _She tightened her grip. "We must take him back to the house."

She felt Granny's hand on her shoulder, patting, gentle, the clawed bones caught up in black lace, as though she was saying 'good girl, good brave girl, you will make it through as I have, as we all must carry on.'

* * *

People offered condolences, milling past her in a neat queue. He watched her smiles and polite acceptance, but he could see her twisting her wedding rings over when she thought no-one was looking. She settled back into a corner of the room, passing a hand over her forehead, then slipped beyond the pillars and up the staircase quickly. He knew where she would be going.

The house was awkward and stuffy and cavernously hollow, as it had been after Sybil. _Too often it's been like this_, he thought, setting down the drink he held but hadn't touched, and heading up the stairs himself.

The nursery had been a calming place, just him and Sybbie, but now it was to be a shared sanctuary. Mary sat at the window seat, watching the cars depart, and Sybbie reached up for him from her crib with insistent hands. She was heavy on his hip now, her cheeks rosy from her nap.

Mary's face was white in the harsh sunlight in the window. "You know, Matthew was insistent on William, but I feel I must name him after his father," she said.

Tom nodded, Sybbie squirming and settling into him, batting a hand against his cheek.

"I'm certain he'll look like him," she said, meeting Tom's gaze. "He already has his eyes." They were turning paler by the day, but there was something of Mary's delicacy in his face, his dark hair, and Tom found himself imagining a slip of a boy with his mother's elegance. If he thought of what Sybbie might look like he always saw his wife's face more than his own. He wanted to cry at the cruelty, that what they were left with was to find the dearest parts of their spouse's souls in other people.

"I don't think I could shorten it. Not like Sybbie. Would that make it terribly difficult, do you think?"

"At first. But they've their own personality, in time." He swallowed. "You'd be giving him a strong, honest name."

"Papa might approve, I suppose."

Sybbie babbled, and he put his palm against her back to soothe her. "It's only your decision, Mary," he said roughly.

"Well then." She rocked the baby, constantly moving in a way he recognized as concentration, keeping away the stir of memory that could flood in staying still. "Matthew William Crawley," she whispered into his downy hair. "My only boy."

* * *

_October, 1921_

Moseley asked in his stilted way if she wanted him to do it, but she flat out refused. She didn't spare time on feeling guilty, not yet, not when the augean task was still set. She had thought, each night since the funeral, of what she would keep. For her, for her son, some things that might go back to Isobel. It felt insurmountable, so she started simply, locking herself in his dressing room first, and opening the wardrobe. Suits and shirts and shoes, two overcoats; a trunk at the bottom she knew held his uniforms. She took inventory, as Violet had told her was the only way to apply method. Pulling each item out, the feel of wool and cotton on her palms, set sickness in her stomach and she had to sit more than once to still the feeling. His smell was there, caught in the fibres of the room. It was strongest in one thing, a brown tweed jacket, the one they had found flung across the seat of the upturned car. It was entirely clean, silk lining slipping past her fingers as she folded it and set it aside from the rest. She lingered over his morning suit, but put it in the pile to be taken away.

The trunk was an effort to pull from the back of the wardrobe, thunking loudly on the carpet. Black leather, brass corners tarnished, the clasps shining where thumbs had flipped them open countless times. Train postages crackled over the surface, peeling edges with a thin film of French wording – Gare du Nord, Calais. When she opened the lid, it smelled of cordite and leather.

He had never shown her this. _You've lived your life, and I've lived mine._

It was all folded up so startlingly neatly, the greatcoat over the tunic and trousers, riding boots laid flat and tucked to the side. Under one uniform, the red flash of another, the colour causing her nausea to return. His mess jacket was folded with the lapels facing up, and she removed it delicately, setting it next to his other jacket to be kept. It felt strangely intrusive, unpacking this life he had led so separately from her and from Downton, four years he'd hardly spoke of. She'd never seen these things for their true functionality, their unwashed torn edges, mud-caked or worse. What she had seen was the gleam and the glory and if she closed her eyes she could picture him at the end of the great hall, the library, looking at her with pride or diffidence. _I'd never have cast you as Florence Nightingale; I'm very glad to see you looking so well._

Beneath the mess uniform were the smaller mechanical possessions. Tucked in his upturned helmet was a canvas bag (gas mask), a whistle (tarnished) on a long rope, a leather belt and gold aiguillette braid. She weighed the leather pouch that held the pistol in her hands. Pushing past the dark panic in her chest, she placed the weapon back next to the helmet. She would not think of the amounts of shots it had fired, or the fact of why he had told her that he was a poor shot with double guns.

Last was a small parcel folded in his cap, documents, tickets, one photograph of him in uniform dated 1915, when he was still a Lieutenant. He stared at her solemnly, and she smoothed her thumb over the still-crisp edge of the paper. It wasn't pride, but a sort of shame she felt gazing at it, so recognizably him, but with age in his face that wasn't as she'd known him. She wondered if this was how he had thought of himself in that time, maturing but as another man, far removed. To simply survive, to do what was asked, _duty_, was to shut off everything he'd been before and he wouldn't dare think of after, wouldn't dare tempt fate or an enemy bullet in that way. It was two days after Sybil that he'd told her this, in the aftermath on nights when they felt anything could be voiced.

"I have nightmares. Not often, but when – what would you do if I woke up screaming at you in German?"

He'd never been so forward with it, and despite her aching grief she had no reaction but to joke. "I'd be unsympathetic to your disturbing my sleep."

His small laugh. "Seriously, Mary."

Her hand smoothing across his ribs. "I wouldn't say a word until you were ready to tell me."

"You'd be as nice as you are." His palm curling around her shoulder.

She had had to show him only once, his whole body shaking, and it was the third time she'd ever seen him cry but in the most panicked way. She hummed and rocked and his breath hiccuped under her hands on his back, blooming hot on her shoulder, his teeth scraping there as his mouth shut. "It's all right. It's perfectly all right," she whispered, her palms moving to his lower back, bumping over his spine, and he clung so tightly she was sure he would tear the fabric of her nightgown.

She kept the greatcoat, too, though she did not know exactly why. Something of her reasoning was still rooted at the train station, the dog she found in his right pocket along with a silver pocket watch. His gloves were in the left with the thumb seams coming unpicked. There was little she kept out of the rest of the house. Three photographs (wedding, uniform, the one she had prayed to), and a book of Greek myths she could only ever read in his voice.

**tbc.**


	2. Chapter 2

_A/N: In which Gillingham makes an appearance..._

* * *

_**ii.**_

_we all live in a harsh world, but at least I know I do._

* * *

_February, 1925_

London was in a constant fog, and Edith passed through the long, dark panelled hallways of the building, her shoes clicking, the overhead lights making a soft glow of the marble tiles. Everywhere smelled of cigarette smoke, and her coat was too warm, the fur collar tickling at her neck. "Michael?" she called. Laughter, two male voices. In his office, Michael sat perched on the edge of the lamp-lit desk, mahogany gleaming, another man leaned back in the chair in front of a typewriter with fingers poised on the keys. Smoke spiralled from their mouths, the quick beat of the gramophone incongruous with their languid state.

"I thought everything was shut up for the night," she said, Michael twisting at her voice, the other man's eyes flicking to her.

"My typewriter's on the fritz," the man said. "I threw it across a room." He grinned, sitting forward into the light and tamping his cigarette out. "And I've got a deadline to meet."

Michael stood and walked over to her, placing a hand to the small of her back. "Edith, this is Lord Anthony Gillingham, he writes for the _Times._"

"Lord?" Edith questioned.

Anthony gave a hooded look to Michael. "I told you I was done with peerage nonsense."

Michael laughed, the press of his palm slipping away from her. "Well I'm certain it's all that got you that column," he said. Anthony waved dismissively, bending forward on his elbows so the white gleam of his shirtsleeves and cufflinks caught under the light. He sighed and unwound the paper from the typewriter, standing and swinging his jacket on. He was remarkably tall, Edith thought, a long line of charcoal grey suit, dark hair and shadowed eyes.

She watched him tuck the paper into an envelope. "No, I got it because of my wit and education," he said, then looked up sharply to the gramophone needle dragging as Michael lifted it. "If you scratch that I'm shipping you to America to buy another copy," he warned.

"Go home, Gillingham," Michael said fondly.

He sighed, then bent to gather his coat. "Goodnight," he said. "Lovely to meet you, Edith." He smiled, nodding to her and striding into the corridor, where his footsteps rapidly disappeared.

"He was in my regiment," Michael said. "The family's lost all its privilege now, though he's the only one left to see it go."

"How dreadful for him."

"I'm not sure he views it that way."

* * *

He was leaning out the window of their sitting room the next time she met him. All she saw was his back, the arc of waistcoated shoulders, until he ducked back inside but kept his wrist against the ledge, cigarette dangling from his fingers. "Oh, hello again," he said genially, smiling at her.

"I was just saying what I told you," Michael said upon kissing her cheek. "Anthony should meet Mary, shouldn't he?"

Anthony raised an eyebrow. "I can see where this is headed already," he said dryly. "You're not terribly subtle, and lovely as I'm sure she is, I'm not looking to act the part of suitor at the moment."

"You're not looking at all," Michael muttered. "That's the problem."

"I thought I had no-one left to judge me for it," Anthony sighed, drawing away from the window and pushing it shut. He sat neatly in the wing back chair across from them.

"You'll lose your looks, you know," Michael said seriously.

She watched Anthony's hand twitch to his mouth, his smirk bloom into a laugh which he quickly cut off in a long intake of breath. "Oh dear," he said. "I should hope the woman I marry will value more aspects of my character than looks." He glanced to Edith with an amused glint in his eyes. "Is your sister very shallow, Edith?"

Edith had not made particular note of it that night in Michael's office, or perhaps it was because of the outdoor lighting now in this room, but as he looked straight at her she saw his face was graceful, strong angled. "I – no, I don't suppose Mary is, anymore," she said.

His head tilted. "Anymore?"

"People grow up," she replied deftly, thinking of how much she herself had matured, of her relationship with Mary having moved from its petty sparring after Sybil's death. Mary had caged herself near completely after Matthew, but Edith thought she could understand such an action. And of course the war had changed her. Sybil had said as much, that day in the library, when she had spoken of her wish to be freed from their life at Downton. Edith wondered at this moment if she had taken that advice to heart herself, somewhat unconsciously, and if her actions would have made Sybil proud.

Anthony nodded. "Of course they do," he said. She watched his features straighten and rearrange into something dark-lined. "Often because circumstance forces adulthood upon them."

* * *

The photographer fussed, and Mary shifted William on her hip impatiently. He crouched beneath the black cloth draping the camera again and Mary turned her gaze beyond him, to the entrance hall where Carson was opening the door, pale sunlight spilling to the carpet. She watched Violet go slowly into the library, until the camera shutter took her attention and the smell of magnesium cloyed the air. The photographer nodded, and William squirmed away from her to descend the last few steps, too small to hold the bannister. She followed him with one hand wavering behind his back, buoyed by his triumphant grin at the bottom. She hugged him against her side for a moment. She smoothed his hair back, the thick unruly mess of it a muddy brown she thought could have been her own father's once, with a catch of gold in it making her throat close. "Go say hello to Granny, darling," she murmured, ushering him away.

Her insistence on photographic portraits were an equivalent to what lined the walls of this very hall, the domineering paintings of ancestors she could not name except for a few. She wondered at how long this archiving would last, whether it would dwindle as William began to leave her in favour of school and adulthood. She wondered about his future cautiously, in small measured steps. _Brave boy, best boy, only boy, my prince. _It was strange to wish for stasis, but that was exactly what she wanted, captured in a camera's lens, an impersonal eye: the fixed image of a certain moment and date and memory of feeling.

* * *

Mary stirred her tea into a neat whirlpool around the spoon, conscious of each clink it made against the fine china. Edith sat across from her, Violet to her right, and the arrangement made Mary feel as though she were being interrogated, sat in the centre of the settee with William tucked against her side. He had refused a nap, but she could see his attention waning, his eyes closing for longer and longer moments as the adults spoke.

Violet watched him fondly, contemplating what Edith had just reiterated about her time in London. Then she scoffed. "Goodness, we don't want to welcome a friend of that newspaper man, he'll be up to tricks," she said, looking askance.

"He's a Lord, Granny," Mary reminded her gently.

"Not from a family we know, surely," Violet chuckled, purposely looking to her younger granddaughter. "No-one we know would associate with such commoners as Gregson."

Edith pursed her lips. "If it must matter, his full title is as the Right Honourable Lord Anthony Gillingham, Earl of Rothbury, formerly with an estate at Bradford Park."

"Don't sound so smug about it, dear." Violet tilted her head."What do you mean 'formerly'?"

"Apparently his father filed for bankruptcy," Edith answered inside a sigh. "So of course he's out of Lords as well."

Mary nodded. "I did say once that many great houses would fall after the war."

Violet's eyes flicked to her. "Yes, and that you didn't intend to be one of them," she said, taking up her cane where it rested next to her.

"We _aren't_ one of them."

"Thanks to our dearest Matthew, no."

There was a large pause as Edith looked to the fire and Mary began fiddling with the beads of her dress. _Dear departed_. She stroked a hand absently over her son's hair where his head was tucked to her ribcage, a warm weight against her. She reached to his small hand and his fingers wrapped her thumb, like they always did as he fell into sleep. After a moment she looked up and found a smile on Violet's face.

"Does this man have any prospects, Edith?" she asked.

"He is a journalist," Edith said defensively. "In politics."

"That is decidedly _not_ an asset to his character," Violet replied.

Mary raised an eyebrow. "A working Lord. How modern."

"Or he's keeping himself out of the poorhouse."

"Perhaps," Mary conceded, looking to Edith with amusement trained in her voice. "Does he believe in a weekend?" Even as she said it her stomach twisted, the milk of her tea tracing sourness in her mouth. Wait and see, she told herself, but she could not help but worry that despite his fallings, this man would be pushed at her. It was a cycle repeating itself, complications of her own making creating fear that she would not deflect as easily as she once had, nor put out barbs in the form of literary comparisons and slights. That she was not as cold and careful as she may wish to be.

* * *

_Wait and see_ repeated in her mind as she settled into her evening dress, black and drop-waist alongside simple jewellery. Despite its shortness Anna had pinned her hair up, and Mary tensed her knuckles under the satin of her gloves, watching the diamond of her wedding rings flex against the fabric. "Will I do?" she asked, turning at the vanity table.

"Of course, milady," Anna said, gathering clothes over her arm.

Mary looked to and fro in the mirror, stood and sighed then moved to the door. She paused, smiling at Anna, then went into the corridor with her head high, an old confidence sweeping through her. She could not name why, but descending the stairs she felt a slight dizziness claim her again, and as the pillars shifted in her view she caught sight of a man stood before the great hall's fireplace, eyes up to the ceiling in awe.

"Have they abandoned you already?" she asked from the last step. He pivoted to her voice, hands behind his back.

His face broke into a smile. "Not at all, your butler told me to wait here. It's been some time since I've set foot in such a grand house." His gaze followed her as she came into the light of the hall. "You're Lady Mary, I presume," he said quietly.

"And you're Lord Rothbury," she returned. "Really Edith should be making the introductions."

"Yes." His eyes lowered to the carpet and she took a chance to study him. He was, to her relief, nothing like Matthew, and nothing like she had expected him to be: taller, slighter, much less fair, an athletic frame shrouded in white tie.

They both looked up to movement on the stairs, and then it was a flurry of introductions, his expression turning bashful as the two of them were paired to enter the dining room together. She took his arm, fingers barely resting against his elbow, staring ahead at her mother's mirrored position at her father's side, and suddenly she resented it, the obviousness of it, the ridiculous formality. She took a deep breath against Cora's pointed look at the seating arrangement, thanking God that Tom flanked her other side. He smiled at her as she sat, and so before the meal had even begun she was eager for the turning when she could speak to her allied brother-in-law.

* * *

Tension rattled in the poised cutlery and schooled faces of everyone around the table except Robert, whose grip on his glass was near shattering it. "So you did nothing to save it?"

Anthony looked at him levelly across the table. "No."

"But as heir surely you felt a duty to – "

"Robert, if this must be discussed couldn't you keep it until the ladies go through?" Cora admonished.

"Gregson and Tom will have to act as referees," Violet said, clearly gleeful at the outcome of conversation.

To her left, Mary watched Anthony set down his glass before speaking. "I don't agree that it is a duty, Lord Grantham," he said calmly. "It made for a wonderful childhood, but since the war houses like mine and like this one have had to repurpose or peter out, and to be frank I'm quite relieved to see it go." He smiled at Robert clearly trying to hide his affronted expression. "Yours has been lucky while mine has not, but that was down to my father's mismanagement, so I've inherited a hollow title," he said simply. "The difference between us is that Downton is a home. Bradford was... a pile."

"Goodness," Violet murmured from the other end of the table. "He truly is another one with modern opinions."

Tom hid his smirk in his napkin. Michael cleared his throat and began steering Robert in a more private conversation, while Anthony turned to Mary.

"I apologize," he said. "Perhaps I am being somewhat forward."

"Not at all," Mary smiled. "You're testament that our generation is much more willing to accept the world's changes."

He laughed and looked back at his plate. "So you agree with me, Lady Mary?"

"It is very much down to good management and some luck," she said, putting down her cutlery.

Anthony nodded emphatically. "Exactly," he said. Mary looked on him with sudden caution, surprised they could see eye-to-eye so suddenly; she was restless for a complication. He turned in profile, looking to where Robert sat diagonal from him, and his head tilted in conceit. "Unfortunately to my father management was all within a grey area."

"And he'd have none of your advice?"

"It was a collaborative effort he didn't want to collaborate on." He gave a rueful smile. "I wasn't to go outside my set responsibilities." His gaze flicked down, long into shadow, and he sighed. "When the financial troubles began I was in... in France."

Mary watched him swallow, and allowed a quiet moment to pass between them. "Well, thankfully Tom has been progressive enough to pull my father into the modern era."

"And your husband was too, I'd heard. On the legal side."

It was Mary's turn to pause. "Yes, he was." She could feel him looking at her intently, trained on her bent head, and when she straightened he moved his eyes away quickly, his fingers curling into his palms. "What was Bradford like?" she asked with a false brightness.

He shook his head. "Oh, all marble and echoing rooms. Quite cold, really, for just the three of us." His voice quieted, near reverent."Nothing like here," he said, and as she searched the planes of his face she thought again of Matthew, so briefly, of salted puddings, a photograph she kept tucked in her bedside drawer, of blue eyes made silver by sun and a paper print. Anthony's eyes met hers, held still for a brief moment that felt like it was understanding. She had not noticed a man's eyes in four years, but his were a rare and pale green, and his mouth tipped up at the edges as he turned away. She paused before looking to Tom. She let herself be hit by the thought that perhaps she had been wearing black for far too long.

**tbc.**


	3. Chapter 3

**iii.**

_don't play with me, I don't deserve it, not from you_

* * *

_November, 1921_

Mary's hands flitted over the jars on her vanity table, eyes shutting in frustration as Anna again tugged and plaited her hair into an elaborate style. "Sorry, milady," she murmured. Mary forced a smile in the mirror, smoothing the lines of exhaustion from her face.

"Perhaps I should cut it all off," she said. "It would make less of a job for you."

Anna looked startled. "I don't mind it, milady. Unless you think – "

Mary sighed. For months Anna had not known quite how to act around her, and they had settled into uneasy silence most of the time. Mary wished for Anna to speak of normalcy, even if it would shift the deep ache within her bones to make way for a heated jealousy at a life she had been so cruelly deprived. So she forced it. She asked after Bates, how the cottage was, to feel her own grief, to twist the knife, to remind herself of what was real now.

"I imagine you'll be at the service tomorrow?" she asked.

"Of course, milady."

Mary nodded, pursing her lips. "I'm glad," she said, lowering her eyes. "That will be all, Anna."

Anna curtsied and left. Mary straightened her shoulders, smoothed her gloves, and went to dinner though she was not at all hungry. But after two months she must face the masses, the sea of black around a stark dining table, where flower arrangements were too garish, candles too bright, and there was a face she always expected to see, a voice, the gaps between them widened by two lacking chairs and carefully neutral conversation.

The rare nights after the funeral when Mary had come down no-one had spoken, and more than once she left to the sound of her son's crying. To hear it was to have a part of herself torn away, worse than what was already ragged, a panic in her chest until she could see him, could weave stairs and halls to a single door though which the sound cracked. She would not let Nanny take him, not even Tom when he was there for Sybbie.

And she would not sleep. To sleep was to have faith that nothing would change, when everything had, and only when she was alone would her eyes close to find Matthew's face. A weight on the bed her mind fabricated, his smell in the pyjamas she wore, sleeves too long over her hands and her braid over her shoulder, dark brown on dark blue, even the ribbon tying it black.

But she did not sleep. She listened to the fire spit to embers. Felt the room leech into a low heat, then turn cold by early dawn. She wanted the place beside her to be upturned sheets and an indented pillow. She wanted to feel his laughter hit the back of her neck and his hands and his cold feet. How could she share a space with someone to have it suddenly gone, invisible, indelible in her mind but known to no-one else? She wanted an absence that could be accounted as momentary. So how to bow her shoulders and carry it as though she were Atlas?

Only Tom's shoulders too had that slope, the tension and slackening in moments, so tiny, of forgetting. Then his forgetting was her forgetting, before she met his eyes and their grief was two-fold but halved, shared, understood.

* * *

Tomorrow.

Tonight had a ritual, and sitting next to the chest that lined the foot of her bed she held the greatcoat first, smelling it, the cordite smell. Then the mess jacket, and she cried, because she had not been able to touch him then, when he had looked so fine and his eyes were so unsure of her presence.

She stood and swung the greatcoat over her shoulders. It cloaked her, and she tucked the heavy wool around her neck, holding it closed against her stomach. In that moment, alone, she let herself miss him. She buried her nose against the fabric and let the sorrow flood, the room shrinking into pinpricks of light and shade and the bright red laid next to her wedding dress. It was a former life within that ornate box, and as she folded the things away she thought that no-one must know, that this was only hers. She left out one single thing, for luck.

_Tomorrow._

* * *

It turned eleven and the church bells rang out a solemn procession. Each ring clung in the air until the next pushed it away, and Isobel curved closer to her. Mary's eyes focussed on the poppies laid out, their red in every hand, on every lapel against black and green and all the earth tones she imagined could combine on muddy boots. She looked down at the feet of the man in front of her, his boots scrubbed to a high-sheen polish. His coat swayed at his knees as he leaned back on his heels in the silence that stretched within the crowd.

A chorus of 'God Save the King' struck up, an unsure waver at its start, and the man turned in the end notes, the way he looked to the sky catching her off guard – it was something Matthew had done in moments of discomfort. She watched his jaw clench and tears find a path down his cheeks, and as he held still he was not a stranger but her memory's projection, until his voice pulled her back. His voice had a constant rough rattle beyond that of crying; he did not see her because fine scarring surrounded his eyes, thickened where smile lines would form. Blind.

Isobel's hand tightened on Mary's forearm. "Come for tea, dear," she said, eyes following where Mary's were fixed, on this light-haired man, his head tipping down as he settled his cap. Isobel steered Mary away down the street, back toward the churchyard, where she halted again at the gate.

"It's Mr. Mason," Mary said. Far around the side of the building they could see him, head bent to a double row of white crosses. "I'll be a moment." The gate opened with ease, and Isobel waited while Mary walked with purpose up the path. She passed Matthew's grave and touched the top of the headstone with her gloved hand before moving to where Mr. Mason stood.

"Lady Mary," he said, inclining his head. "I like to tell him how the service goes."

"I was going to tell Matthew," she said. "But I wanted to catch you."

His eyes met hers in surprise, then softened. "Please let me say how sorry I am, milady, about your Mr. Crawley."

They looked to William's grave for a moment, and she thought of what an odd sight they must make, but one typical of this day. Matthew had visited here the year before and she had hung back, waiting as he stood in light rain with all colour bleached from the land. There was mud on his boots then. There were no red poppies. She'd seen the word thank you on his lips and when he'd joined her at Sybil's five-month-old grave he held her hand so tightly. She had been able to smell the rain in the wool at his shoulder as she pressed against his side on the walk home, wanting to be close, arm low around his back.

The words on the white cross pulled together as her eyes lost focus. "We wanted our child to have your son's name, you know," she told him.

"Though naturally you named the lad after his father," he said gently.

She pressed her hands into the leather of her purse, where the toy dog lay. They'd laughed at it, when he donned the uniform again, reaching into the pockets on instinct and finding the forgotten talisman. It had been the sort of laughter laced with heavy memory, all the brighter for its weight, as though each breath held relief. She smiled, watching Mr. Mason carefully. "But I call him William," she said, with all the importance and earnestness she could.

He turned his hat in his hands and nodded. It was enough.

* * *

The blue of the sitting room smothered her. She began conversation only to stop again, look out the window or into her cup.

"Do you know what I did when Reginald died?" Isobel finally said. "Matthew was ten, too old for it really, but for that summer after it happened I read to him every night until he fell asleep. It was a comfort to both of us. In the mornings at breakfast he would always hold my hand and ask very seriously if I was all right." Her hands flexed as though she were imagining it again, a small palm in hers. "Sweet boy," she whispered. "Then he returned to boarding school and well..." She stopped and shut her eyes for a moment, fingers ghosting over her mouth. "Earl or not I thought he'd sit at my bedside and read to me in my old age."

Anger suddenly gripped Mary, and her teacup rattled as she set it on the side table. "It's cruel," she hissed, her skirt bunching in her fists. "To fight for it and not know – would we have made a good Earl and Countess? I was settled in the idea – and Matthew, modernizing the estate only for Tom to now fight alone – all because I told him to leave the hospital. God, he could have telephoned."

Her hands found her face and only when Isobel's weight shifted to the seat beside her did Mary cry, a siphoning of air from her chest, Isobel's arms enclosing her and rocking them both. Mary thought of what Isobel must miss, what it must be like to have gained a daughter so quickly, or maybe not quickly at all but over a span of nine years; to have known for so long through her son's moods and looks across a great hall or a dining table while Mary herself had tried to hide what was so obviously transparent. She did not retreat from the gaps her life now held, normally cloistered in the nooks of Downton's walls but open here in the blue of a room she had so rudely pushed in to, as haughty and cold then as she was vulnerable now.

"I feel half myself," Mary said.

Isobel was quick to shake her head. "You must be a whole with my grandson." She smiled and tilted Mary's face up, wiping away an errant tear. "Because I've got a grandson, haven't I?"

* * *

In the weeks after their conversation, Mary spent more time in the grounds than she did the house. She did not care that a winter chill was settling in, for every moment of her walks Matthew was there beside her, his arm in hers. She walked out to the copse near the river's edge but never went into the trees, never weaved between them for fear of losing him in the irregular ground, the branches.

On thickening grass he matched her stride for stride. He never spoke, and when she passed the benches under the cedar he stopped. She wished he would follow to the house, push her to the door, but he stayed at its perimeter. Silent, the red string pulled, until a bend in the path and he disappeared from sight. She held the image of him, hands in pockets, some days in a white linen suit but most in brown tweed, his hair never quite bright enough, face shaded and solemn. Only when the solid front door was under her palm, Carson at its other side, would she mask her thoughts and return to the nursery.

She turned away when others held her son, especially her father and Tom; she resigned herself to her boy's concentrating frown, the straightening shape of his nose, already long-fingered hands. He would always be a reminder, it seemed, over days and months and years, and again she wondered just how he would grow, who he would truly end up favouring, what others would see when they looked at him.

* * *

_December, 1920_

"_Mary. _Mary_." A hand grazing her stomach pulled her from sleep, and she opened her eyes to his face over her, lowering to brush his nose against hers when he saw she was awake. "Happy anniversary," he whispered._

_She smirked against his mouth. "I hate to disappoint you darling, but we were married in March."_

"_Yes, but it's been a year since we realized what utter fools we are and got our act together," he said._

_She sat up and smoothed his hair away from his eyes. "A year since you had a fistfight in the small library, you mean," she said, equally low, the haze of winter dawn tinting through the curtains._

"_Well you stayed so I must have done something right." She glared at him and he smiled innocently back. She curled against the chill in the room, head shifting closer to his. "Sybbie's first Christmas," she murmured. _

_Six months, and Matthew's hand took hers, tracing over her palm. "I know," he said against her hair. His tone of voice made her crawl over him where he lay propped against the pillows, let him cross his arms around her back and hold her against his chest, feeling his heart and lungs, falling back into sleep. 'I love you' was breathed against his sternum, and his hands framed her face, thumbs following the line of her eyebrows. He nodded. "Always."_

* * *

_December, 1921_

A small Christmas tree went up. "We're doing it for Sybbie," her mother said, and Sybbie's excitement could not be contained, nor her sweetness. Every time Mary passed it and saw all the silver baubles and tinsel and smelled the pine, her stomach clenched. She moved away as quickly as possible until Sybbie's curiousity got the better of her, and Tom found them in the great hall with Mary holding Sybbie up to the decorations. She looked frail, her dress a sheath around her, hair simply knotted at her neck. "This is one Carson helped me make when I was little," he heard her murmur, before his daughter laughed and clapped.

"Da, Da, Da," Sybbie chirped when she saw him, Mary turning her tired eyes to his face. This thin, strong but waning woman, he thought, at a loss for what to say to her.

"Hello, love," he said to his daughter instead. Mary passed her over and clasped her hands in front of her, looking at her shoes.

He looked at the tree, its size a grand thing in his eyes, and staring at it made it easier to tell Mary that he knew it was too soon, it would always feel too soon. He had never been grateful for those six months he'd had between death and this date, but he was now, in the face of Mary's barely three months of recovery.

"Don't worry," she'd said the night before, when she had seen the look on his face from across the drawing room. "I think New Year's might be worse." He'd taken a moment to understand her dark humour, but when it hit him, realizing she meant the snowy proposal described in a letter to Sybil – a letter his wife had read aloud with girlish fervour in the middle of their Dublin flat – he felt winded.

He came back to himself at the sound of Mary's voice. "We knew each other almost a decade, and how ridiculous is nearly two years out of ten." She let out a strangled breath, and he saw she was laughing. "If I had just t – "

"There's no use in that, now," he said, trying to keep the frustration from his voice, because he'd thought the same about himself countless times, lying awake in that empty bed, purposely turned away from her side of the mattress. "You were different people then. We all saw it, how stubborn you both were. And you couldn't have stopped the war no matter what."

"Are all brothers-in-law so wise, Tom Branson?" she asked, tears suddenly in her eyes but a determined, regal slant to her posture, twisting her necklace between her fingers.

"It took me five years to pluck up any real courage around Sybil."

She looked at him with that unimpressed tilt to her head he knew of old, the ageless look that her grandmother held as well, as though she could see straight through you. A jump of relief beat in his chest. "And even then you wooed her with politics," she said.

He smiled. "Was Matthew much better?"

Mary swayed, pursed her lips and looked back at the tree, then nodded. "When it came to a good argument, yes, he was."

**tbc**


	4. Chapter 4

_A/N: Very sorry about the hideously long delay. So much to write with so little time._

* * *

**iv**

_lie is so unmusical a word._

* * *

_March, 1925_

He rode like any aristocrat born to it, but with a low poise as though fixed on an exact point, an economic skill in bringing the horse round. They were first field, the terrain not forgotten to her, and Mary felt a thrill of competition run through her again. The hounds fanned out and the reds stood strong against a greying landscape. Dusk still came early, and in the stables Mary guided Diamond to his box as Anthony stilled his mare and rubbed at its mane with a gloved hand.

Mary cleared her throat. "Am I right in guessing you were cavalry, Lord Rothbury?"

He removed his top hat and spun it in his hands. "Why, do I ride like one of the guards on the Mall?" he asked wryly.

"Slightly more ruthless than the rest of us," Mary replied.

He stood silent for a moment, no longer so humorous, until he said, "You looked glad to go out again."

"I was," she said, smiling. "Diamond's been faithful; I refused Papa selling him to the army."

He raised his eyebrows. "You'd have to have put up a fight, he's excellent calibre." She watched him go quiet, a heavy blink in his eyes, jaw shifting. "Hendricks – " He paused, combing his fingers through the horse's forelock. "Hendricks nicknamed us Ares." His expression cleared slightly. "We called him and his horse Prometheus, because they were always bringing fire with them."

She was surprised he could so readily speak about it, but he seemed at ease here, a feeling that was infectious. "I can't envision Michael Gregson in the cavalry," she said.

"No, I realized early on that it was... obsolete. I transferred and his was the regiment I ended up with." She watched his hand smooth back over the horse's neck, then looked to his face; that trace of solemness again, angles picked out in the ruddy light, hair set with a shine of auburn, eyes down until the horse nudged its head against his shoulder. Outside the hounds scrabbled and far off there was still the stray, sporadic sound of horns. Anthony stepped back, in his navy jacket, in his tan top boots, palm gently pushing on the animal's jaw. As he let go the horse bobbed, stomped until he held the reigns. "I miss them," he said. "The estate's; the war stables'. No use for mews in London now." Her eyes hit his mouth as it unfurled a wistful smile. _Handsome_, she thought. _Shy_.

And as that realization hit, so did guilt.

* * *

He was a guest in the house over the span of the hunting weekend, more welcome than on his last visit, and now at dinner it was Edith who chose to take the spotlight. "There are some developments in London I think you should be aware of, Papa," she ventured.

"Oh? Regarding?"

Edith set her glass down with a slow, deliberate movement. Mary knew there was no easy way to broach this. "They're proposing changes to property law..." She stopped, frowning, and when Mary glanced at her father he gave a hooded, uncomfortable look.

"Parliament is in the process of reading a new Property Act," Anthony clarified. Mary felt grateful to him, while the rest of the table descended into a gloom that he would not understand. He had already told Mary and Edith just what was happening in London, something that opened old doors in her mind and gave her both doubt and hope. Now Mary was able to catalogue other reactions as Anthony remained unassuming, looking across to her and giving a smile. She watched with unease as her mother caught it and her eyes widened imperceptibly.

"Which entails?" Cora queried.

Anthony straightened in his chair. "Exactly that. Entail laws."

"Anthony could be a liaison of sorts," Edith said brightly.

Robert's jaw tensed. "Could he."

"I wouldn't wish to offend you," Anthony told him.

"No, Edith is right. Evidently I'm not as clued in to events as I could be." He studied Anthony with a calculating eye, voice measured. "And you would be well informed, I'm sure."

"I should think Mary would be eager to hear more from you," Cora interjected. Mary's gaze moved swiftly to her as her stomach plunged, her napkin clutched in her lap. She could feel Tom's eyes questioning upon her cheek, Violet's a little more shrewd, Edith across from her attempting to hide a smile in her wine glass. _You were right_, Mary wanted to hiss. But her sister looked smug, and Cora's feigned innocence at Mary's glare was enough to spike annoyance. "As would we all," her mother amended. It was Isobel's gaze Mary avoided entirely, not wishing to incite that conversation yet.

The day had made her so tired. Mary sat quietly until the women stood and went through, and she ignored Anthony's eyes following her out of the room. She slipped past Carson at the door with a feeling like shame. It burned in her throat; she hung back from the party, and as they entered the drawing room she turned sharply for the staircase. The nursery. Where there would be no judgement, and when she reached the landing she tore at her gloves, fabric sticking along her palms.

In the nursery staircase she collected herself. She could hear William babbling, though he should be asleep by now, and she couldn't help but smile at the sound. He sat amidst the chaos of toys and books and blankets, with a grin for her as she sat and gathered him in her lap. "Will you not settle, my prince?" she murmured. She dismissed Nanny with a nod.

He did, curling himself into her shoulder and picking up her necklace in his small palm. "Dogs are out, Mama?" he asked, lifting his head to look at her. The foxhounds had been a delight to him and Sybbie that morning.

She gently brushed his hair away from his eyes. It tangled in her fingers, damp from a bath. It would need cutting soon. "No, they've gone to sleep, my darling." She tilted his chin so his eyes met hers again. "As should you," she said.

The blue left and returned under dark lashes. "Gran Iz?" he asked sweetly.

She kissed the light freckles on his cheek. "We can say goodnight to Gran Iz."

* * *

"Lady Mary."

The voice stopped her return upstairs from the drawing room, and she turned on the step, William heavy on her hip, finally asleep. Anthony hovered at the bottom of the nursery stairs. After some hesitance, he put a hand to the side of the narrow doorway and bent his head to see her at the top of the flight. "At dinner..."

"Not here," Mary said, moving away from the landing. It took a moment before she heard his footsteps follow. He straightened from the stairwell and glanced around the room, the low light and the curtains, Mary treading between detritus to the bed. She knew that he was aware of the barrier he had just crossed. Her hand slipped from beneath William's head as it hit the pillow, and as she watched him fall into deeper sleep she thought that all of them were an amalgam of lightness and dark. This was not wisdom from one of the ancient tomes in the library, but in one sense a simple fact of human physicality. William's hair was darkening to a shade close to her own, and part of her despaired for it. He would become a child with a bicycle and a cousin who sang the Gaelic songs her father taught her. A child with a birth and death day. But such memory should not be put on children, she thought, and so she tried her best to cease seeking out comparisons in his August eyes; in the way he might frown when reading, fussing over the words with his finger to the page; his stubborn streak that was perhaps partly her own. Yet on days of dark he was Matthew's boy, her only boy, her great lament, her sadness and resolve, and on days of light he was just her son.

Today must remain a day of light, even as it waned. She stood and smoothed her dress, looked up to Anthony's gaze politely turned away. "You were singing," he said in a whisper, lifting his eyes to hers.

She had not even realized. She put a hand to her mouth, and he looked on her with a gentle understanding in his face, a look Matthew had given her so often, the slight angle from under eyebrows, and her stomach lurched at the sight of it in another face. She thought it would be patronizing, from anyone else, but it wasn't; instead, it shocked her in being reassuring.

"It's all on your terms," he said suddenly.

She kept her voice low, glancing at William. "What is?" she asked, wanting to occupy herself and carefully gathering toys from the floor to deposit in the large trunk between the windows.

He moved to help her, and she felt a stir of annoyance. "At dinner, your family presumed to know what we wanted," he said quietly. "And I don't know. So I gladly give you the upper hand."

She paused when he gave her a stack of blocks, staring into the bright mess of toys and trinkets. He blurred in her periphery, suit a black mass against the fireplace, and vulnerability surged, crouched in her. He was trying to do something gallant, or moral, she knew; in many ways she had more to consider than him, and that weight stifled her for a moment, amidst the stale smell of the trunk's leather, her palms gripping its edge fiercely. "I don't need a hand if no game is being played, Lord Anthony," she said.

A long silence. "Clearly I've overstepped – "

She turned, snapping the lid shut. "Have you? Are you fond of being here?"

His shoulders fell. "I am," he said honestly. "Yes, I am."

Their next silence was less tense, and she checked on William then moved to his end of the room, to the settee that sat before the fireplace. Her fingers lifted to her necklace. "It's quite admirable, having no qualms about saying exactly what you mean."

He smiled and tension shifted. "Are you telling me I'm rude?"

She shook her head, and he sat next to her but a fair distance apart, took a breath. "I am hesitant in saying some things." He played with a cufflink. "I... veil them."

"Such as?"

He tilted his head one way and then the other, in an uncomfortable but graceful movement, his eyes flicking to hers and then away. "I said I didn't know but..." He looked into the fire's grate for a long time. "But I like you," he said finally. He looked down with a small quirk of his mouth. "First and second and third."

"Ah. Clever," Mary said, turning toward him. "Do you know the context of that quote?"

Fires and couches and strange accents. Young dares. "Yes," Anthony told her. She tilted her head, felt her hair swing out against her jaw, the heavy pearl of her earring following.

"And what happens after it?" she asked, eyes wide, a challenge flickering in them.

"Yes," he said, head matching the angle of hers, until they were studying one another, and her hand descended to cover his on the cushion between them.

"But you won't run away," she murmured.

His eyes did not travel to her mouth as she expected them to, as hers had to his earlier that evening, and even though she felt attraction she also felt relief. His eyes stayed fixed on hers, earnestness tinting them again as he spoke. "No."

* * *

Anthony was gone before the next morning's breakfast, and Robert was quick to vacate the table, leaving Mary and Tom alone.

"I think he's worried over the entail being brought up again," Tom said to Mary's surprised look.

"Old ghosts," she murmured, sipping her coffee. Her air of calm could not fool Tom for long. It worried her too, having the uncertainty build; was she to bear up to tradition for her son or take action for herself, as she had always wanted? There was no certainty in any field anymore, and she felt unsettled by it, adrift in worries for William, her father, her memories of the last time the entail had been broached.

All had seemed secure in the first hour of William's birth, and even after Matthew's death it still technically was, but she could not look on the subject coldly. Matthew fought for its break when he had barely known her, and despite feeling selfishness she clung to his young morality as justification – she wanted it broken. Matthew was the reluctant heir, and how could she know how William would feel? _A hollow title,_ Anthony had called it. This could be one in the same, her ownership with her son's name. It had meant a great deal to Matthew. It meant a great deal to her.

She excused herself and went to find her mother.

* * *

The drawing room clock was loud in her ears, a fire set, and her mother was bent over the writing desk, intent on the page.

"Mama," she said softly, knocking at the doorway, the action making her feel incredibly young.

"Mary," Cora said upon seeing her. "I'd like to speak with you about Lord Anthony."

Mary sat on the settee and smoothed her skirt. "That's a subject better broached with Edith, I should think," she said lightly.

There was the rustle of folding papers, then her mother came into view, sitting close to her. "Mary," she said with a serious inflection, taking her hand between her cool palms. "You're the one who's been getting quite close to him."

"Edith – " Mary said, feeling tension square her shoulders. The night before came rushing back; _her terms, first second third_, and she began to realize just how genuine his words had been.

Cora gave her a reproachful look. "Forget what Edith did or didn't do." Her voice softened. "What is it you want, my darling?"

Mary looked down, and revisited what had been reeling in her head moments before. "I'm not sure that matters."

"Your whole life can't be William, Mary. Much as it feels like it should. And whatever sway your father wants to have over his upbringing as heir is always overshadowed by your right as his mother."

There were many times Mary had found her mother's accent soothing, with it the feeling of being a child again, and if she shut her eyes she was ten, twelve, thirteen years in the past, in her red room in a blue dress, inadequacy flooding her, crying that her father finally had a son.

"Papa will make the ultimate decision though, won't he? About the entail."

"Don't get too far ahead. Not even London knows for sure yet."

"Oh, Mama," she cried. "Must history repeat itself with no-one in my corner?"

Cora's hands tightened around hers, and the sympathy in her eyes made it difficult to swallow the claustrophobia in her throat. "You've always known this house was your blood, Mary," her mother said. "It's cruel you can never be its Countess but your money runs it now, and if you have the chance for everything except name, take it." She reached up and touched Mary's cheek. "The world is changing faster than I gave it credit, and I think that in the end William might thank you for shifting some weight from his shoulders."

Mary gave a heavy breath at the thought. That was what she did not know and what was stalling her – would it, in the long run, be good for William?

Her mother kept speaking. "Your father will come round, because you've always been his champion. So if this law passes... you will be the only one standing in your way."

She was always in her own way, always on the difficult route, cursed, stubborn. She prayed it wasn't a trait William could inherit. The truth, what should have played out and felt so tangible in her mind, spilled from her lips and made her want it all the more. "Matthew would have broken it," she whispered.

"Yes, he would."

She looked up desperately. "Tell Papa that. Please."

Cora touched her cheek again. "I think you are the best advocate, my darling."

* * *

_April, __1925_

It was a telegram from London that solidified the point, the conflict, her father's terse mood and hushed telephone conversations. A telegram from the only person at the hub of it all, the person who would of course know before anyone else. He kept tabs, and as she read it Mary wanted to laugh at his presumption, or maybe his thoughtfulness. Maybe what she felt was pure relief. Fear. Caution – for the sentences typed brought with them opportunity in two standout words – then set an insistent task in her mind.

_Royal Assent for Property Act. Entail breakable. Watch Times headlines. Anthony._

**tbc.**


End file.
